Art imitates life, even in the sequels.
It's no secret that James Cameron used the Vietnam War as inspiration for his action sequel
Aliens, but I see stronger parallels to the earlier French and Indian War.
Cameron's sequel and Ridley Scott's original horror masterpiece Alien feature violent battles with a powerful, mysterious
enemy in a new frontier. At the heart of these stories is a woman
whose experience with that enemy made her a hero, Sigourney Weaver's iconic Ellen Ripley.
In the French and Indian War, the closest thing to Ripley was George Washington, whose encounter and return to the wild Forks of the Ohio
(modern-day Pittsburgh) mirror Ripley's encounter and return to
the untamed planetoid LV-426.
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| Planetoid LV-426 (left) where the Nostromo crew first encountered the alien, and Planetoid Pittsburgh, a strategic point in France and Britain's battle for The Ohio Country. |
George Washington is Ripley
Like Ripley on the Nostromo, Washington
didn't choose to be in charge. It took a xenomorph bursting through her fellow crewmember's chest and killing her superiors to put Ripley on top, but Washington's ascension to leadership
was a little easier. His first in command simply never showed up, so it was up to him to take on the French. Which he totally, utterly
botched.
It should probably be noted that Ripley was smart and methodical in fighting the alien, while Washington's inexperience actually incited the French and Indian War and caused thousands of deaths, but for the purpose of this comparison...they are the same.
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| This scientific recreation of George Washington proves they're pretty much the same person. |
Though Washington's fellow Virginians considered
him a hero for simply surviving his first big battle with the French (which he caused), the
British army refused to reward his embarrassing loss and disbanded his Virginia regiment. He
didn't spend 57 years floating through space in hypersleep like Ripley did between sequels, but he
did spend a couple years as a planter before the army came crawling back.
The greedy Weyland-Yutani Company offered Ripley her old job
back if she agreed to return to LV-426 and lend her alien-fighting
expertise to the Marines. Britain offered Washington the military
respect he desired if he agreed to lend his expertise to an
expedition to recapture Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Allegheny
and Monongahela Rivers.
Both Ripley and Washington were returning to
the scene of grave horrors they survived, and both would face more death and
destruction than they had ever seen before.
Ash is Tanacharison, The Half-King
The Mingo leader Tanacharison, or the
Half-King, was an Indian ally of Washington's during his first
mission to warn off the French from the Ohio Territory. Like the
android Ash, he may also have been a homicidal maniac with his own
agenda.
When Ripley threatened Ash's secret mission to
bring back the alien at the expense of the crew's lives, Ash went ballistic and tried to kill her by shoving a rolled-up porno mag down her
throat.
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| The A/2s always were a bit twitchy. |
Tanacharison's secret mission, it seemed, was to destroy the French. His driving force was reportedly his intense hatred of the French stemming from the time they took him captive as a child and boiled and ate his
father.
The Half-King found his opportunity for twitchy vengeance when he and Washington attacked a band of Canadians. A witness said he
saw the Half-King yell in French, "Thou art not yet dead, my
father!" as he tomahawked a wounded Canadian diplomat's skull, washed his
hands with his brains, and scalped him. I would hate to see what a Full-King would have done.
I know I mentioned the Half-King in my
last blog, but this dude is so fascinating I may try to shoehorn
him into any topic I can. "Was James K. Polk the Illegitimate Son
of the Half-King?" I don't know, I haven't written it yet.
The point is, Ash and The Half-King
both had their own plans and didn't mind getting their hands a little
messy to get the job done.
The Alien is the French-Canadians
and Indians
I admit comparing Indians to a
fictional extraterrestrial monster feels offensive and wrong, and I
acknowledge that an even better argument could be made for the white
man as the alien wiping out America's indigenous population by
facehugging them with empty promises before bursting through their
chests with manifest destiny.
But from the point of view of young
George Washington in 1754, the unconventional fighting tactics of
his Indian enemies were as terrifying and effective as something from H. R. Giger's dark imagination. Where the alien used air ducts to get around the
Nostromo, the Indians used the dense woods. Their lack of stifling rules of
engagement gave them a significant edge over the British enemy.
Just as great a threat to Washington were the Canadians, inhabitants of New France who did not fight like the regular French. These Canadians were the result of Frenchmen spending a
couple generations in the cold wilderness, before they discovered hockey to focus their aggression. To Washington, who didn't speak French and never traveled to Europe, they were very much alien.
The Queen is Canadian Commander Beaujeu
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| Commander Beaujeu poses in the wind. |
In his sequel, James Cameron introduced
a new terrifying member of the Alien family ñ the Queen. Bigger,
badder and bitchier, the queen laid hundreds of eggs. Similarly, Canadian
Commander Daniel Hyacinthe Lienard de Beaujeu had nine children.
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| The Queen doing the robot. |
What truly earns him Queen status is his badass look and the cunning way he
led the Indians to battle against a British force that far outnumbered them. As impressive as the sight of the Queen with her
arched head when Ripley first encountered her, so must have been
the sight of Beaujeu on the battlefield, adorned in war paint and regalia to inspire his Indian forces.
The comparison ends there, though.
While it took multiple climaxes to kill the Queen, Beaujeu was shot
dead in the opening moments of the Battle of Monongahela. His
leadership and training inspired his men
– French, Indian, and
Canadian
– to fight on to victory.
Burke is General Braddock
It's tempting to compare the real-life
General Braddock to Colonel Apone from Aliens because they both led
doomed missions. The thing is, Apone was trying to do the right thing
whereas Braddock was pretty much a dick. For this reason, General Braddock has
more in common with the sleazy Burke, as played to perfection by Paul Reiser.
It was Burke who lured Ripley into
returning to LV-426, and it was Braddock who offered Washington a
chance to join the British army if he lent him his expertise.
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General Braddock: I will secure you a procurement agreeable to your wishes. If you go.
Burke: You can have your old job back, kiddo. If you go. |
Burke's singleminded goal of getting
the alien for The Company at all costs mirrors Braddock's insistence
of doing things the British way. Where Burke's actions led to the loss of the entire human colony on LV-426 and most of the marines, Braddock's inflexibility ultimately led to
the bloodiest day in the history of the British empire up to that
point.
British engineers made a
nice smooth road through the woods, which made it easy to travel but even easier to be ambushed. Just after crossing the Monongahela River, shots rang out from the dark woods.
The scene must have been as chaotic and
terrifying as the alien ambush in the atmosphere processing station.
As the British army advanced along the narrow path, they found the scalps of their comrades nailed to trees and terrifying
whoops coming from all sides in the woods. Their own musket fire filled the air with smoke. As the British and American troops retreated during
the confusion, many were killed by
friendly fire.
Braddock led 1300 men into battle. 456 were killed
and 422 were wounded.
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| Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked! |
Washington urged Braddock to change
tactics and order his troops to enter the woods where each man could fight for himself,
but Braddock refused to break formation. Once
Braddock himself was shot (likely by one of his own men), Washington
was able to lead the survivors to safety. He had joined this mission
as a volunteer aide but once again, circumstances made him a leader.
Like Burke, Braddock was fatally
wounded in the battle. And like Burke, he sealed his own fate. The Aliens special edition makes it
clear that Burke ordered the colony on LV-426 to investigate the
derelict spaceship full of alien eggs, which makes him responsible for a whole lot of death and destruction.
General Braddock sealed his fate by not listening to George Washington about the one thing that could have prevented a massacre: Indian allies.
Bishop is The Local Indian Scout
Washington Wanted But Never Got
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| Bishop only wants to help. |
Where is Bishop, the solid trustworthy
counterpart to the violent Ash and Half-King? He should have been
there. Washington knew that having a significant number of Indian allies on the mission to
recapture Fort Duquesne would make all the difference
– scouts who could stealthily check to see if the enemy might be
hiding up ahead to take them out. But Braddock didn't see any need to recruit local Indian scouts and left with only a handful. His insistence
cost him and most of his men their lives.
An Indian ally, a trustworthy "other" like Bishop, could have saved the British army and perhaps even
change perceptions of Native Americans. He might have been a hero,
or he might have gone unhailed in the history books with Braddock instead
taking credit had the mission been successful.
But we'll never know
because Braddock was a dick.
Newt is Daniel Boone
- Fact: Scrappy young Newt survived the
horrific battle with the aliens on LV-426.
- Fact: Young frontiersman Daniel Boone was present
during and survived The Battle of the Monongahela.
I rest my case.
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| Newt was better at staring pensively, but Daniel Boone excelled at fighting tiny Indians with giant axes. |
Exceptions to this Comparison
Clearly, Alien perfectly reflects the battles of Jumonville and Fort Necessity, and its sequel Aliens corresponds exactly to the bloody Battle of the Monongahela. With the following exceptions:
- George Washington never blew
anything out of an airlock. While he managed to survive numerous
close calls, he never obliterated the enemy or even won a significant battle
during the French and Indian War.
- Ellen Ripley was a reluctant hero.
She went back to LV-426 to stop her nightmares and get her old job
back. George Washington was more than willing to go back to learn from the British army and rejoin them.
- To my knowledge, Pittsburgh has not once been nuked from orbit.
Sources: Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner
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